Social Media Is The Best Tool You’ve Got

June 4, 2015

Social Media Is The Best Tool You’ve Got

If you’re a business, social media is your best friend right now. It may seem like a thorn in your side to maintain, but it will improve your business overall in numerous areas. Social media is still relatively quite a new thing. There isn’t a written rulebook yet.

Getting to grips with the dos and don’ts isn’t something you can fully grasp just yet. A lot of it you have to play by ear. However, a lot of old customer service tricks and tips do tend to still apply with it.

For instance, let’s say your social media accounts are your first line of defense when it comes to complaints. Of course, first line of defense is a metaphor. In customer service the business should only defend itself when it is adamantly sure it followed all possible rules.

There is some room for a little rule bending though. In order to keep the peace, you may wave a few rules for the sake of extending an olive branch to an angry customer. With social media you can start things off on the right foot instead of the wrong one.

Apologize first of all. Be careful with your language here though. Do not indicate any kind of alleged guilt or admitting wrongdoing just yet. Always take the matter offline privately to sort it out.

Hashing out a customer services agreement publically is bad for two reasons:

One, anything that makes the business look bad will be there for everyone to see. This is regardless of whether any of it is true or not. You don’t want any alleged offenses to go viral. If it does go viral, no amount of SEO from a company like useoagency.ae will be able to knock it out of the search results. Something that bad could catch on and kill the company.

Two, it will allow other consumers to respond to you and sometimes bend your decisions toward customer demands. This may cause an increase in people trying to take the business for a ride by complaining for money or other free things.

This is also essential on short-form social media like Twitter. 140 characters is rarely enough to properly apologize and work out a set of solutions.

Social media is also a promotional tool. It’s all based on the viral principle. Say for instance a person shares your social media account’s promotional post. If a friend passes it on, their friend might pass it on again.

A single share or retweet gets you access to a vast number of people. This is all usually best coincided with deals or offers to sweeten it up and increase the chance of sharing. Social media can also spread you across a broader range of people. With the sheer amount of platforms out there, it is wise to try and be on the largest ones. You can also cross several demographics as each site tends to carry its unique type. Social media is the marketer’s dream. It’s a wonder tool if you can use it right. Just follow the trends.